greenmountaineer's thread

Blessed Are the Poor in Dade County Clinic

Big Ronnie, who served in Iraq
and never came back, watches the sun rise
in the red, yellow-white, blue of his eyes
on the corner of Oakland Park Boulevard
where Ronnie sells Miami Heralds
not far from his dugout of flies
that swarm around Red Man spittle.

If there's no get up by morning, well,
he can sell roses at five pm
to a shirt and tie for the missus
after he walks to Dade County Clinic
for meds he won't give to Sundance Kid
who offers a ride in his Lexus
with Pillsy and Toothless Fred.

He'd rather look like a black ant, he says,
with a black plastic trash bag on his back
in which he tosses aluminum cans
he stows away from the clumps of chew
while he swallows two Lorazepams
to stop the rat-tat-tat in his head
next to an infield that looks like a desert.


This Is grit between your teeth stuff GM
 
Hi GM, dare I ask about

...never came back,
watches ...Oakland...Miami
...

Best regards,
 
Hi GM, dare I ask about

...never came back,
watches ...Oakland...Miami
...

Best regards,

Hi Senna,

It alludes to PTSD from the Iraq war (where my son, a career officer, spent a year BTW). Ronnie has trouble sleeping, so he often sells the morning newspaper at busy intersections to commuters, a common sight involving homeless men in So. Florida.

I welcome your thoughts if you think I could have expressed that better.
 
Hi Senna,

It alludes to PTSD from the Iraq war (where my son, a career officer, spent a year BTW).

I hope that your son is fine despite the harsh circumstances.

Ronnie has trouble sleeping, so he often sells the morning newspaper at busy intersections to commuters, a common sight involving homeless men in So. Florida.

I understood more or less the whole poem, and it is a great poem.

I welcome your thoughts if you think I could have expressed that better.

To me, the phrase _ never came back _ means that Ronnie got killed. Possibly, you treat this phrase metaphorically. Then, this one phrase doesn't work for me. It's followed by the present tense _ watches, _ and this combination feels awkward. Otherwise, I feel the whole mood/style, language, ... and was taken by this poetic text.
 
Metaphorically, I think the different tenses can work, Senna. However, I believe that if there’s anywhere in a poem that the descriptive should take precedence over inference, it should be at the beginning so as not to cause confusion. So your point is well taken. Thanks for the feedback.

I’m running a few scenarios through my mind and will post again if I come up with anything.
 
A lot to think about. I understood the first two lines as meaning that the 'Big Ronnie' that went to Iraq was radically changed/damaged by the experience - was a different person /personality when he returned. I didn't think he had died but can see that it could be understood like that. Excellent work - thought provoking.
 
A lot to think about. I understood the first two lines as meaning that the 'Big Ronnie' that went to Iraq was radically changed/damaged by the experience - was a different person /personality when he returned. I didn't think he had died but can see that it could be understood like that. Excellent work - thought provoking.

Thanks, ishtat. I respect you and Senna as poetry critics. I’m particularly reminded of the impact your critique had for me on “The Primordial Language of Women.”
 
Camp Shomria

During his red-eye flight from LA,
Harv remembers Camp Shomria
somewhere up in the Catskills
when he made the thingamajig
he couldn't wait to bring back home
to give to Mother on their porch

in Newark as quiet as a shiva
covered hallway mirror
whose gateleg has two diamond earrings
that dangle from the best number one
pipe cleaner thingamajig
ever made at Camp Shomria.
 
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Love

You barely can hear the one vowel
between two soft-hearted consonants.

It rolls off my tongue like perfume
would exhale its lavender.

But if I tug your heartstrings with it
as I whisper in your ear

and you were but a marionette,
I the puppeteer,

then on this sofa made for two,
I am nothing, nothing, My Dear.
 
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Invalid


Let me feel you naked for a while,
flesh on flesh, fingertips, abdomen
intertwined so that, elevated,
phlegm does not coagulate
to spoil the moment. Oh, I know
there are other matters to attend.
Toilette has a certain flare to it,
but the skin of our twenty-five years
flakes faster every day.

It wasn’t long ago we lived
when the sly touching of skin
mattered most after football
on TV, and a late dinner
Saturday with a bottle of wine.
Skin matters anytime, my Dear.
 
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Thomas Said to Evelyn

What we think about matters
every moment, my Love,
not as dark news at eleven
while fretting alone in one’s bed,

but as beeswax melting slowly
when friars in the monkery
write beauty onto parchment
before the sun comes up,

and each stroke finishes softly
as in the making of love.
 
Oh, Citizen, Give That Tunic Away!

Why bother to save for a rainy day?
The gods have given us goats to make cheese.
Oh, Citizen, give that tunic away!

But we hoard our coins like the family's slave
to buy a future of freedom and ease.
Sunflowers still bloom on a rainy day.

Blow bubbles in the baths today.
Though bubbles will burst, there are no debris.
Oh, Citizen, give that tunic away!

Go play with the children. Be led astray!
The present moment is free if you please.
Rain kisses the cheek on a cloudy day.

You say you'll have more denarii, pray
why scurry a chariot through the streets?
Oh, Citizen, give that tunic away

for love is true and forever's today.
Entrails of the sheep give no guarantees.
Why bother to save for a rainy day?
Oh, Citizen, give that tunic away!
 
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Breakfast at Henry’s Diner

Mommy who scotch-taped two Rice Krispies
on her nose to look like warts,
asks Peg, the waitress at Henry’s Diner,
to bring a pot of witch's brew
and a cup of cocoa for Princess Kate
who hardly can wait for Halloween,
dressed in her happily ever after
costume that comes with a magic wand
she waves over her cereal bowl
to make it snap, crackle, and pop.
 

Breakfast at Henry’s Diner

Mommy who scotch-taped two Rice Krispies
on her nose to look like warts,
asks Peg, the waitress at Henry’s Diner,
to bring a pot of witch's brew
and a cup of cocoa for Princess Kate
who hardly can wait for Halloween,
dressed in her happily ever after
costume that comes with a magic wand
she waves over her cereal bowl
to make it snap, crackle, and pop.


Thanks
 
By the Light of the Silv'ry Moon


We saw so many holes that autumn,
holes in Rome with frescos of saints,

Paris's less known catacombs,
and those in the Ypres Salient

whose trenches were once filled with blood
where poppies now dance in the wind

as if red flowers ever could
cover up ghosts under white crosses

of stick figure boys who should have been roaring
twenties dancing with their honeys
by the light of the silv'ry moon.
 
In a Vermont Country Road Graveyard

Where the grass is seldom mowed
there are stones with stories to be told
under moribund lichen.

Take a stiff brush with ammonia,
though much isn't said with this one,
except life ended in 1918,

Zachariah White predeceased Mary,
loving wife; their daughter was Ruth
in the year of the Spanish flu.

and then there’s Edwin Tebbets,
more modern, whose stone is adorned with
Carhartt jeans and steel toe boots.

Notice the flattened grass
and footpaths among the stones,
but for one in a corner

I discover is Anne Covington,
a spinster perhaps who died at 90
in whose loving memory no boots,

no Keds, nor dainty shoes
circle a footpath around,
as I slowly sip twelve roundabouts

pausing every now and then
to let the incense from my cup
of morning coffee spiral towards heaven.
 
love the peace and reflective vibe that works in tension with some of the images - like the daughter's death from the spanish flu, definitely not a peaceful scenario.

old graveyards are fascinating places, and - for me - very calming. i could happily spend hours reading the stones, contemplating the people and their stories....
 
The Wisdom of Solomon


As if we were fish out of water
swimming upstream to spawn
we came of age, red in the face
like sockeye salmon when Mr. Wright
wrote "coitus" on the blackest board
in sex education class.

Later, a young man, I was the king
of Israel seducing Bathsheba,
and then I'd release my goat in the desert
until it returned on Friday nights
with a paycheck burning my pockets
in the oil slick rain of dark alleys.

At last with the wisdom of Solomon,
I atone while I draw you near
in the splendor of our marriage bed
whose warmth is skin upon skin,
for neither the body nor the soul,
split in two, can live long alone.
 
your writing never disappoints

so many years compacted so concisely, yet full to the brim with the vital nature of humans
 
Sisyphus Inside His Rock


Its tectonIc doorplates scrape open
at 7:59 in the morning
with your doppelgänger inside
you pushed up his skyscraper hill

after you rolled him out of bed
when a sleepless clock screamed 5:00 am!
to deposit him in a railroad car
that takes him to the 45th floor

where he's a paperweight on his chair
from which he will roll down again
to catch the 6:15 pm
rock rolling out of Penn Central,

arriving by 7 at New Rochelle,
until 5 o'clock in the morning
when you will roll him out of bed
to deposit him in a railroad car.
 
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